Remembrance
by Zayz
Summary: LJ. Fourshot. Deals with four seasons worth of learning to live on one's own in the middle of a war the year after Lily graduates Hogwarts, beginning with autumn.
1. Autumn

A/N: Motivated by A Fine Frenzy's beautiful autumn album "One Cell in the Sea" and Kaitsy's beautiful story, "Autumn" and even a little by Ann Brashares' beautiful book "Girls in Pants." I am inspired, and therefore cursed, by beauty found in the masterful artistry around me.

This takes place in Lily's parents' house, where she is currently staying, only a few months out of school. She's unpacking a suitcase of things she can't quite keep or throw away. Just a little mood piece to appease my thirst for melodrama, nothing particularly epic. Enjoy?

--

Autumn has always been her favorite time of the year.

There is just something about it; a certain timeless sparkle to the way summer begins to draw to a close, making room for transformations on the horizon.

The teasing summer breezes that played with her vibrant red hair on the warm, endless days spent outdoors begin to nip harder than usual, biting and scratching at her ankles like a restless toddler. The sun, so affectionate and ever-lingering on the infinite canvas of cotton-candy blue above her, sinks earlier and rises later, seemingly exhausted by the summer's needs for brightness.

Greenery so meticulously cared for isn't so green anymore, transforming into vivid colors – as though nature had been saving up for the whole of the past winter, spring, and summer for this moment to put on its best displays of color and brilliance.

Autumn is beautiful. There's a tang of sweet apples and smoke in the air, a swirl of fallen leaves around her bare skin, a mysteriousness about the way things change and life goes on during those few weeks in a year full of them. Everything is different, a sinister note to a childhood song, and nothing feels the same, chaotic in all its earthy majesty, and the intricacies of her complicated soul come out to play, because the world reveals itself for what it is: bitter.

Harmony ends when autumn comes around every year, and all that used to be dazzling and smiley and luminous draws to a gentle, fuzzy close. Things feel moodier, sultry, more important – like it's time to put aside the childish nonsense poisoning her mind with false promises, silly and idealistic notions.

Autumn brings about warm cloaks and itchy sweaters smelling like old memories so long forgotten, stored away in the deepest recesses of her mind. She remembers all this now, as she sifts through these monumental pieces of clothing in the middle of October, sitting on the floor of her old childhood bedroom, so painfully pink and flowery and juvenile. It contrasts in an almost comically grim way to her current situation – hurt and raw and dizzy, everything meaning too much, the transparency of her life and the way she lives it lacerating her tender insides.

She remembers all of these things as she opens the suitcase, remembers this green sweater she used to wear over her other clothes when she was cold. She remembers how, last autumn when she was newly a seventh year, she had been walking outside and crunching leaves underfoot with the Head Boy, who told her it brought out the green of her eyes.

She remembers that his compliment had frightened her back then, even though she was secretly flattered, and because of this, she never wore the sweater again.

She puts it to her face, letting the soft material rub against her skin, the smells and textures coming from within it invoking that scene back to her memory – the navy of his shirt, the slight stubble because he'd forgotten to shave, the slight nervousness of the way his mouth curled up into a small smile.

When she tucks it away, being careful to fold it nicely before doing so, she finds her favorite pair of blue jeans – faded, old, patched, worn. These were her favorites, and she kept mending and altering them when they dared to show their age; she had worn them for years, loving them like a mother loves her favorite crockery, loving them because they were stunning and wise and made her feel safe in the containment of their soft denim that fit her shape so perfectly.

She had worn them throughout her school-years, never letting them go when she should, and as she strokes them, the pattern and consistency of the seams feeling as familiar as the hand of a dear old friend, she remembers all the things she's done in these jeans.

Friends made and lost; profound laughter and inexpressible tears; bold courage and diluted cowardice. Love found and promptly gone astray, love that seared her bruised heart and caressed her with gentle fingers.

So much love can be found in these pants. Too much for her to handle, but never quite enough. Love that blesses her soul, but condemns it in the same breath.

She continues to pull clothes out of her suitcase, the memoirs that follow them whirling around the space of her pink bedroom like ancient magic, holding back the impulse to cry with some of them. They represent so much, too much, to her; and seeing them now, in the house she was raised in, after everything that has happened to her since she left it and returned as a cherished stranger, it's almost too much to bear.

She doesn't keep track of time as she opens these old garments of hers that she's put off seeing, because time would ruin the solemn majesty of seeing her old self reconnect with her new self, as though they really are different people. But, after what doesn't feel like very long, the suitcase is mostly empty, and she just has to run her hand along the bottom, to make sure she hasn't missed anything.

And then she finds it.

In a particularly shadowy corner of the case, she unearths that black shirt of hers – the simple black camisole with the sheer layer of floaty black material sewed on it, the shirt that is so achingly lovely for its straightforward design and simplicity. It's the shirt Marlene gave her a couple of days before they left Hogwarts and she cries as she reminisces, cries harder than she thought she ever thought she would. She gave it with the note; that note she still has somewhere in this mess of painful nostalgia:

_This jumped at me when I was out, and it just feels mysterious to me; like it's quietly impressive and ambitious, waiting to be set free, waiting to be larger than life-size. I thought of you and I bought it. Be extraordinary in this shirt, Lily Flower, because things aren't the same as they used to be. Make lots of memories, but don't let yourself become one._

Now, even though she's held back so well today, she can't help but finally release those tears squeezing with a dull ache behind her skull, release the tears that she promised herself she wouldn't release when she began unpacking.

This isn't a good idea, facing up to her demons like this, coming so close to those days, to those times, those recollections she wishes belonged to someone else because their intensity is taking a sizeable toll on her, tearing her apart bit by bit. This isn't a good idea but she's doing it anyway, because she can't run away from this forever.

This is a part of her, a part of who she was and what she has made herself to be. To face the future, she has to confront the past, and now she is – how could she have thought she would do this without breaking?

So she hugs the shirt against her chest, curling up with it and crying, her tears spreading around the material, mixing with old tears she has cried on this garment, mixing with all the beauty and the pain and the murkiness this shirt brings to her.

Having the shirt here, she remembers everything…

_It was the last night before school was going to end, that last night when she was outside with James Potter, the Head Boy she was kind of dating and kind of not, the one she kind of loved but kind of didn't, and they were talking like they did._

_Her head was on his collarbone, his arm around her waist, and they were killing time because they were afraid to let it go any faster, talking about life and what it was going to be like once they left._

_He told her he was going to miss her, miss her like hell, miss her more than she could ever imagine. She realized she felt the same way, even though they were still kind of a couple but kind of not, and she hadn't known what to make of it._

_She wanted to look at him, breathe him in, memorize him the way she memorized spells – wholly, in entirety, so that she would never forget even in the face of danger. So she had kissed him there, as they sat out on the steps, kissed him without the reserve she usually showed him, and he reacted as only a man could – by deepening the kiss, his tongue exploratory and his hands much the same._

_So she had broken the kiss before he went too far and she ran inside the school. He followed her, shouting after her that he was sorry for whatever he had done. She ignored him, in her own flurry to get back to the dorm, where she fished through the thin layer of her everyday clothes and found the shirt she had stashed away from Marlene._

_She could just feel that tonight was the night to wear this, the night she was going to choose to be extraordinary. So, she locked him out of their empty Head's dormitory as she slipped out of her clothes and wore her prettiest bra and panty, and put on the black shirt. She opened the door then and she let him in, hearing his breath hitch in his throat as he saw her, taking in the way she was dressed and the look on her face._

_The shirt hugged her superbly in all the right places, and under his gaze as he took her to the bed, collapsing on her in a kiss that robbed her of all semblances of oxygen, she felt invincible. She felt beautiful._

_She made love to him that night, made passionate, exerting, all-consuming love right there in their dormitory for the very first time. They had both made love to others before, but this felt different – desperate and flurrying at some moments, overwhelmingly savory at others. His lips and teeth and tongue marked every bit of her skin, his hands all over her, and she explored him with the same wonder, the same emotion, the same sense of drowning in the surreal, barely-believable nature of a dream._

_When he pushed into her then, finally, being with her in every sense of the word and giving her some of him to keep forevermore, it didn't hurt like it had with everyone else._

_It felt easy, natural, and as stunning as everything else they'd done this evening. It felt _right_, and she couldn't find it in her to do anything but sink into him, exhausted but exhilarated, as she slept beside him, naked and perspiring but happy, happy in a way she had never been before._

_She woke up in the morning beside him still, sticky and bathed in morning sunlight with tears in her eyes – but they were the truest ones she'd ever shed, and he kissed them away as they made morning love, slow and dulcet and just as wonderful as the night before. They did so for hours until it was time to go; time for reality to set back in on those hours out of time, time for them to rejoin the lives they were supposed to live._

_She kissed him abundantly, touching him in any way she could, as they dressed each other, resisting the urge to fall back on the bed and do it all again. She wore that black shirt this morning as well, loving the feel of the fabric on the skin that didn't feel like her own, and he told her it looked beautiful on her._

_He traced the shape of the neckline with his finger, and with his hands still touching the shirt, he gave his affection to her neck for a few minutes, her closing her eyes and him enjoying the stickiness of her in the morning._

_When he resurfaced, the material of the shirt still in his hands, he whispered into her ear with a placid blow, "I love you, Lily."_

_And she, overwhelmed with the same sudden, ardent surge of love, fell forward and hugged him, sobbing real animal sobs and shaking right there on his shoulder._

_He didn't care though; he just held her there, held her so close and rubbed her back and told her she would be okay, but she knew she wouldn't be. There was a war raging around them, he could be dead tomorrow for all she knew, and she knew for a while, she was not going to see him again._

_But she loved him too. That was the real tragedy of it all._

_So when she left on the train, not sitting in his compartment because she knew she would break down all over again, she clutched that black shirt Marlene had given her, and wondered what the price of being extraordinary really was – was such extreme pain worth the fleeting, but extreme joy? Was it worth tearing herself apart when she rebuilt so exquisitely at the end? Could she cope with the agony, the worry, the sick, sick feeling of being trapped in her own head because there was no way to get to him?_

_She had not had enough time to make her decision, she realized as the train chugged along on the track, so unaware of the heartache plaguing her chest and knocking the breath and the fight out of her; she couldn't choose to keep or to leave him because she had already left him._

_She had left him, and she knew the time and miles that separated them would win; because there was an unbearably high likelihood that she wouldn't see him again._

_All she had was his memory and the faint promise of his love. But how could she base her whole life around one night, teenage kisses, and whispers in the darkness of their dormitory?_

_She couldn't. And that was why he was gone._

The shirt is completely soaked in her tears now, and she feels like she's cried herself out to the point where there is no moisture left in her; yet the tears keep coming as she continues to hold it to her face, her lovely green eyes rimmed with red.

She grew up in this shirt last year. She grew up because now she knew what it felt like to love, to leave, to find the courage to breathe life in without censors. She grew up because life wasn't a sheltered bubble of smiles and butterflies, and when she made love to him, she saw him and everything he stood for without being afraid, every part of her open.

She grew up because it was time to leave the girlish innocence with which she used to dictate her life behind, and face the hard world as a woman – a woman who hurt, who felt, who _lived_.

It was hard. Nobody said it wouldn't be. But she's done it, hasn't she? This past summer, she joined the Aurors at the Ministry, who were whispering something about a rebel group called "The Order of the Phoenix." She keeps owling her friends wherever she may be, giving them news and keeping up with theirs. She is at her parent's house, spending time with them now before it gets to be too late.

She cut her long, curly hair. She doesn't have as much fun putting on her make-up. The only jewelry she wears is the plain gold necklace James Potter gave her on her birthday last year, and the gold earrings from Alice. She made sure she didn't have a boyfriend.

She has remade herself to be a different person, but now she knows that she can't forget the person she used to be in her haste to change.

The world is changing. People around her are changing. The season is changing. She herself is changing – but only as much as she lets herself.

Maybe she wears her hair differently and doesn't dress up as much as she did, but her fiery spirit and her capacity to love, love, love as much as her heart can hold has not changed at all. If anything, they have increased, because in these troubled times, her friends and her happy recollections and her ability to love like crazy are needed more than ever before.

So she stems the flow of her profuse tears with the back of her shaking hand, and inhales in the scent of her wrinkled, delicate black shirt. It still smells just like that night – a heady aroma of vanilla, of sweat, of the honeysuckle that always grew at the beginning of June when summer was new in the atmosphere, of the husky smell that hung around a boy turning into a man.

She can still hear him in her ear, his breath tickling the crevices of her ear, so soft on her flesh. "_I love you, Lily._" She can still see the light playing on the shadows of his earnest eyes; feel his hand cupping her breast, his other brushing like her favorite summer's breeze along her long leg. It's like he's here with her, here when she needs him most.

With a wobbly sigh, she bites her quivering lower lip to keep it still and folds the shirt as tenderly as she can, tucking it back into her suitcase. She folds the rest of the clothes she took out along with it, their weight different from when she took them out.

They feel lighter, as does she – like something arduous and hefty has been lifted from both, leaving only the best parts of each to make the most of, because there will be plenty of darkness to come.

When everything is put away and neatly having a place in that suitcase of hers, she puts it by her snowy-white door with a heaviness in her abdominal area. A burden has been lifted from deep inside her, but a different one has been added in its place – the nuisance of her juvenilia for the responsibility of her maturity.

Now she feels as though her conversion is complete – as though she's finally the adult she's always yearned to be. It just feels different from what she thought it would be; it's much more serious, much more cumbersome. Like there's no room for chance, no margin for error. Like this is _it_; no compromises, no escaping.

So she stares at the suitcase in the doorway pensively, images of leaving for first year all those years ago replaying like a film clip in her mind's eye, and then goes back to her bed – her small bed, with the pink covers and fluffy pillow and the best mattress, which she and Petunia used to sit on and gossip on when they were little girls.

She lies upon it, taking in the view from this bed she slept in every night for so many years. Mid-autumn sunshine, musty golden with more immensity than the frothy summer sun, shines in through the window on the other side of this rosy cube, soaking the room with its rays, the dying light casting vibrant shadows.

"_I love you, Lily_."

She can see his smile in her head – such a beautiful smile – and she smiles too, playing idly with a lock of her hair, as red as the leaves a few meters from her, as red as the stray apples dropping to the earth, as red as the blood that pumps so warmly through her, leaving a glowing blush on her pale cheeks.

Autumn is here. Change is here.

But now, so is she; as she remains on her childhood bed, and remembers.

--

LATER EDIT: This is going to be a four-shot for all the seasons, just starting off with autumn. Decided a few hours after posting.


	2. Winter

A/N: Okay, so I obviously changed my mind. This is going to be a four-shot instead of a one-shot. Previously, I did autumn; now I'm doing winter, and then spring and summer.

Motivated by the quietly tragic "Mistletoe" by Colbie Caillat and the anguished "Versions of Violence" by Alanis Morissette. Both summed up what winter means to me in this tale – here, I'm basically taking the optimism and change in the last chapter and extinguishing it.

I don't like this as much as I liked the autumn one. It wasn't done right. But I'm supposedly a dumb-ass who doesn't know what she's talking about so don't listen to me; or maybe you can a little. Enjoy?

--

The leaves have whizzed down to the ground. The wind has picked up tenfold, becoming as unpleasant as boxed ears with its harshly not-to-be-bothered attitude as it cruises down the streets each day. Delicate smells and colors and feelings from the previous weeks, full of rich hues and shades and memories, make their final stands and promptly lose, as Fate dictates; they lose to the smothering stillness and whiteness of winter.

The first snow of the season has graced the ready planet, the white flakes having the consistency of wet cotton balls, and an eerie silence follows it down.

When the weak winter sun, hibernating along with the woodland animals, finally gives up completely on warming people, the atmosphere is left gloomy and perpetually iron-gray, like prison bars from the heavens.

Deprived of lawns to mow or plants to care for, people don't fight their barriers, preferring to lounge about and pursue books, films, steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Snow coats the streets and houses and the empty trees that look naked without their plethora of emerald leaves; undisturbed, glinting in a cold sheen, nothing but white to be seen for miles around in this self-contained world inside a cocoon of draftiness.

It's just _quiet_. Too quiet.

This silence is stifling. The energy of spring, summer, and autumn has come to a neat close, like the final cut-off of a grand symphony. The holiday season attempts to bring joy with bright lights, merry jingles, positive smiles and hearty promises for a better tomorrow, but people know this isn't so.

Only the naïve believe tomorrow will be better. The rest give it up and wallow in their misery, drown in their melancholy, knowing it's no use and letting the packed snow cover their hope until the spring comes to thaw it out, hopefully soon.

There is such beauty in the barren landscape of winter, beauty in the way things are left to languish the way they choose instead of being forced to be something else; but with that comes such harsh, stark loneliness. Pleasure of any sort feels faraway, just beyond the tips of reaching fingers, enough to drive one mad with want and despair and anguish so powerful they cut in like the very worst of frostbite.

And yet, Lily liked winter most of the time.

Despite the pros and cons of the lonesome chill enveloping London-town, winter brings back happier times for her, times when winter didn't feel like this – so tragically and deathly quiet. She muses upon this, as she sips on her hot chocolate in the comfort of her rented apartment, perhaps not as toasty as she could be but warm enough; curled up on the sofa with a book she isn't reading, in front of a Muggle holiday special she isn't watching.

At home, winter used to be such fun. She and Petunia would love winter hols as children, running downstairs together in matching night-dresses to open presents in the family room under a tree decorated just the night before, checking stockings and hugging their parents and eating four Christmas cookies each even though they weren't supposed to.

She would bundle up in her winter clothes, mittens and gloves and even the hat she hated but had to wear because her mum made her, and she and Petunia made snow angels with their father. Beautiful snow angels, all over the backyard – Petunia's were always the best, but she was a close second.

They built snowmen, too. Grand, tall snowmen that her father made secretly while the two little girls got distracted but insisted they made together; their mother gave them fruits and vegetables for facial features and the three of them would be pleased, so pleased, their faces raw and pink and alive with joy only being outside with family can bring.

Winter traditions ceased to exist when she got her letter for Hogwarts and only came home for a few weeks to celebrate Christmas and New Year, but the joy and twinkle winter gave her never really left her. Hogwarts winters were jolly fun too – having snowball fights with Marlene and Alice, occasionally breaking out in war against the Marauders, cheating abundantly by using magic to pelt snowball after snowball at the wrong person.

It's not as easy to enjoy winter, but it's possible. She's enjoyed it for years. It's only now that she doesn't, only now that she sits inside with hot chocolate like everyone she would mock as a kid and sulks instead of being outside playing with frozen globs of water.

Marlene and Alice sent an owl to her the other day, wishing her happy holidays. Their notes were cheerful, telling in great detail about the flat the two girls had rented together. They offered to have her chip in and stay along as well, but she refused them in her less cheerful reply. She has her apartment in the middle of town, walking distance from everything that matters, and she doesn't want to leave. She's comfortable the way she is.

But that's not all of it.

When she moved here at the end of October, two months ago, she chose the location solely because it _was _so much like what she would never buy, where she would never stay. Her apartment is frosty, even with magical assistance, and she hasn't personalized it much. A few paintings here, maybe a rug or two there. But that's it – she doesn't want to decorate it. She doesn't want to make this different from how she feels right now.

Solitary. Out of touch, out of reach. Barely here, barely anyone unless she's out with the other Aurors, owling Dumbledore with or for news and keeping tabs on a few people here in London that have the potential to be helpful.

Her work is her life. Otherwise, she is disconnected, as fragmented as a shattered mirror, feeling something only when she has to.

In October, when she opened her own Pandora's Box, reliving all those things she saw and felt and heard and did when she was an unstable and erratic almost-adult, something changed inside of her. Her tender heart, overflowing and earnest and covered from top to bottom with rose-colored bruises, finally took a peek at the real world, and without meaning to, she closed it back up again.

Her rationale is this: in a time like this, when winter isn't a celebration of starting over, when winter is the good in the world abandoning everyone, who can afford to love? Who can waste their time in the arms of another when arms are as brittle as the ice-covered tree branches outside? Who can afford to feel anything, to anyone, when there is a war going on and people are dying and others' troubles seem so much greater and sadder than one's own will ever be, and nothing is the same or what it ought to be?

Who can breathe in life without censors when the truth is so volatile, so cruel, so unearthly and ungraspable in all its violence? It's like suicide, like climbing a mountain in one's undergarments; she wants with everything she has in her to hold on so tightly to those people she trusts and cares for and yearns to love, but she knows she just _can't_.

Love may be the only light she has left to cling to, but it's hidden too deeply under a snow-storm of her own, and it can't get out of there because _love isn't enough anymore_.

She's been hurt. Everybody has. Some people are good enough and brave enough to live again, to keep picking up their wreckage and give them to someone else, but how is that any way to live?

Try, try, try to live and love and _be_. Be something, someone worth knowing. Be extraordinary, like Marlene said. That's what she's been telling herself. Try to find the light. Try to jump, and grab hold to whatever she finds above her, because it's better than whatever sad ruin is left of herself down here.

But here, in this wretched apartment with the hot chocolate that's quickly becoming as cold as the winter raging in complete silence outside of her building, it doesn't feel like trying will do anything for her.

She can try, try, try the way she wants to, but what will it do? What does that achieve? How many times can she allow herself to be broken, mangled, maimed in all the ways that were supposed to preserve her? How many times can she be expected to be let down, to be allowed to slip out of people's lives because she doesn't meet the unwritten and unspoken standard to which she is held?

All she wants is to be dug out of the bottom of this well she's found herself in. To be picked up and saved, to find a miracle in the gentle smile of a man who only wants _her_. To have confidence in that faint light at the end of the tunnel, to be the woman she knows she is.

She wants it all. She wants to be it all. She knows she can, and she knows she has it in her, and yet she's still so fucking_ alone_.

Is there no one who wonders where she is? Is there no one who will just look past everything else in this muddled, defeated world of hers and take her away, take her to a place where it won't hurt as much anymore?

She's so young. She deserves _more _than this. So why is she here – bitter and anguished and replaying her old dreams and memories for comfort in her head, like an old woman who has lost everything she cared for?

She abandons her hot chocolate on a side-table, the hot chocolate that isn't anything resembling hot anymore, and as she looks out of her icicle-adorned window over the lightly populated London streets of dismal gray slush, she wonders what she's going to live for.

She can't think of a lot of candidates, which says something dreadful about the recluse she's permitted herself to become, but she can thankfully still come up with a few.

Her mother, so soft and loving and worried whenever she writes. Her father, attempting with little success to assure her things are fine at home and she should just do what she needs to do. Her sister who pretends she doesn't exist. Her close circle of friends, who have their own troubled lives but make their meager efforts to include her anyway.

She considers adding James Potter to this list – James, who used to shoot Cupid's arrows into her when he touched her anywhere, who first called her beautiful, who made such excruciatingly poignant love to her the night before she had to leave everything she knew behind, who said he would miss her and looked like he meant it.

She considers it long and hard, pressing her face against the wind-blown glass, letting her breath pool into a spot of cloudy condensation as she did when she was young and drew pictures in it. Her forehead is getting cold where it is, her hands even more so, but she doesn't move, closing her eyes and letting those vivid depictions of James she has stored in her head take her over, sharp and clear as photographs.

James. _James_. Her best friend James, whose name feels like bubbly champagne on her dry, chapped lips; whose smile never cools like her chocolate does; whose gentle eyes are too contradictorily green but serious for his face.

Her best friend James, who hasn't owled her even once since school ended.

She closes her eyes against the window now, the tears brimming in her eyes – warm and from deep within parts of her that she doesn't want to explore – becoming ice to her skin.

He's somewhere out there, she knows. Somewhere in the world, maybe staring out of the window in his own place, the same feeble excuse for sunshine lighting his face, the same dismal snow smeared around the streets, the same winter trying to hold him back like it's holding her back.

Maybe he's thinking of her too, thinking about where she is and what they did together. Maybe he's not. Maybe he just misses her, like she does him.

She doesn't think he's with another woman. Girls just know these things, and she _knows _the way some people do that he's not with anyone.

But maybe he wants to. Maybe he, like her, is sick of cold and wind and gloom and murk and wounds that don't seem to heal. Maybe he, like her, is confused; so frustrated and desperate, leading an inward revolution that can't be heard by the rest of the muddled population. Maybe, like her, he is ready to be mesmerizing, ready to love with anything, everything he's got left, willing to embrace a new start.

Maybe, like her, he's looking for wings to fly him away, away from here and all that _here _is supposed to mean, because _here _is too abandoned and too pessimistic and like a box that will never grant any kind of a break.

She takes her forehead off her ice block of a window, the temperature so low that her breath of condensation remains as a thin screen from the devastation below her. She takes her hot chocolate, which is basically melted ice cream by this point, and she leaves it by the sink, because she doesn't want to deal with it now and will do it later.

Then she lies back on her sofa, grabbing a shawl from nearby and wrapping it around her thin person, her teeth lightly chattering, as she watches her holiday special on television with a listlessness that she knows will not be quenched by taking her thoughts lying down.

But she does know here, as she pretends she's going to be fine, just fine, without any of her melodrama, she has an answer to her barely-phrased question of a few minutes before:

She _can _add James Potter to her list of people to live for.

If there's anyone in the world she should live for in this desolate time of her life, when nothing she does is adequate and unfeeling snow extinguishes any hopes of light brewing under the surface, it's James.

She can live for him. She _will _live for him.

Because if she doesn't even strive to live for the people she loves, despite how useless and paradoxical and agonizing it is, why is she still here when others can't be?

What would be the point of living at all?

--

A/N: I beg you to be gentle when you review this one.


	3. Spring

A/N: This is short, but the next one (hopefully) won't be.

Motivated mostly by your reviews, "A Place in this World" and "Change" by Taylor Swift, and "Let Go" by Frou Frou. There's also a phrase from Batman, because the movie kicks ass and it just fit.

--

Winter has the strangest habit, she notices, of defying all the normal rules of time.

At the start, it feels like autumn ends too soon, making way for the short winter days full of gray before she can catch her breath; then it crawls slowly through December and January, before it speeds right back up again through February.

She raises her head slowly through the shapeless, exhausting days of working and avoiding the haranguing of Marlene and Alice's owl, and before she can register the sudden change in scene, drizzly April has arrived and spring has already begun.

Spring is always such a strange time of year, at least to Lily.

It carries the gloomy consistency of winter, with all the rain and clouds, as though the heavens are crying their eyes out over the folly of humans (for which she herself cries sometimes too), but there's the strangest glint of _something _in the air.

Autumn's magic is undisguised. Winter has a general coldness about it that is not helped by the sordid weather and snow.

But spring – spring is subtle, and carries with it a disgruntled sort of enchantment, like the first moment of disorientation after a long sleep, when a person's soul can be read through their disarmed eyes because they have not yet had the time to hide it again.

The damp ground, always rained out and muddy, perfect for rolling around and getting filthy, has some stubble of green in it – like a whiskery beard that might go away but might still have the opportunity to grow out. The beginnings of leaves are peeping out of the ends of tree branches that have shed the snow and are looking for something else to cover them.

It smells musty outside, like a wet book long forgotten; like soap shedding its dirty epidermal layer; like the lingering, undermining scent of a lost lover irritating the abrasions of sorrow they left behind.

Eyes peep out of window curtains. The first brave children put on rain-boots and splash in the puddles. More people are outside; with umbrellas, granted, but outside nonetheless. Snow has melted into even more puddles, and the world seems like it's going to drown in rain; it's as gray as winter in London, but there's the new color brown merging in with it.

Brown, the color of trees that stand so sturdy despite all that the earth does to it; the color of birds' nest where the young and vulnerable are cared for; the color of soil that will nurture plant seeds to bloom when they are ready; the color of embers where fire flickers, ashy but warm nonetheless.

Brown, the color of the flecks she would count sometimes in James Potter's hazel eyes.

As spring continues rolling in, and it's as wet and cold as ever, she thinks of him more and more often. He keeps her company in the strangest ways; when she's outside in the courtyard, sitting on the chairs, watching life go on; when she's getting dressed in the morning, surveying her exhausted appearance in the mirror; when she's reading another one of Marlene and Alice's concerned notes and putting it aside for another day that probably won't come.

She can swear she sees him sometimes, whilst she is tying her unwashed hair into a sloppy ponytail or leaving her basically-cobwebbed eyeliner on the counter again instead of using it. She can imagine him tugging on her hair and making some supposedly witty remark about how she should really care more for her personal hygiene; see him coax the elastic out of her hair and make a mess out of her eyelids by attempting to apply her eyeliner for her.

She can smell his ashy boy smell; feel the softness of his touch even if his hands are calloused because he probably still plays too much Quidditch. And this sets her off completely.

She misses him. That's the bottom line. She yearns to see him again, hear from him again. It would be worth getting a black mess that resembles raccoon waste on her eyes if he's the one that makes it.

He would love playing with her make-up. He would want her to wear it again. He had last seen her when she shone, towered above the rest, a young woman finally comfortable with being loved, and he would want that girl again. He thought she was beautiful. He wouldn't think the same about _this _girl, she is sure. Who would?

She knows she's not beautiful anymore. She's troubled, confused, hardened, disjointed. Winter hasn't been a good time for her. She's something of a mess, and this isn't a mess she can find within herself to clean up.

She's hit the bottom now – the bottom where it's hard stone beneath her and she can't sink any lower, the tiniest circle of light somewhere above her, too far to reach with her frail little fingers, her short little arms.

She had tried to fight her way out this winter, looking for a way to get through the minutes, hours, days, weeks, but she lost her battle. She gave it up and she sank, because she didn't think anything she did would set her free. So she became a mole and remained under the surface, learning how to endure in the dark and survive. Subsist. Go through the motions of her day and convince herself that this is all she can ask of her will.

She has a theory that she misses him especially now because if he was here, and he saw the state she's in, he wouldn't stand for it. He'd drag her out of the nest she's made for herself down here and bring her to that light she doesn't want to find. He'd hold her hand and squeeze it tight, making her brave like he did in seventh year, and he would love her the way she needed to be loved.

She is positive about that part – he _would _love her.

The only concern she has is, how long will he be there to love her? How long will he be able to stick around for her, hold her hand and squeeze it tight and make her brave, because there's a war going on and unlike in school, his world is bigger than _them_ now?

She's not insecure and she's not clingy (most of the time), but he's recently become quite a crucial part of her, when everything is going awry and the only memories of love and beauty from seventh year concern him. It's fair to want to know the duration of his care before she has to be on her own again.

It's a matter of self-preservation, really, because his love has always been something she is cagey of, and she doesn't want to make a fool out of herself. Not when the world is so large and pungent and there's no _time _left to do what they want to do.

This morning is just like the rest of them, she knows:

Wake up with the image of James Potter in her brain. Brush teeth and hair with short, mechanical strokes. Feel vaguely guilty about not using that eyeliner again. Ignore the face in the mirror. Catch the Tube to the Ministry. Find out about her day's assignment. Do it. Come home. Eat something, maybe. Feel vaguely guilty about not answering Marlene and Alice again. Go to bed. Start the cycle again tomorrow. Start it again and again, flipping through the days like a magazine, not wanting to change the routine unless it's necessary, because this is such a comfortable rut she's made for herself down here.

People can get used to anything. Her mother used to tell her that whenever something happened, something ruptured and blew apart, because she was and still is such a creature of regularity. The human body is adaptable. After a few days, things will settle again. There's no need to worry. Only now, the circumstances are different.

She misses him. She feels tired, and her aim in life right now is to get more sleep. She is nothing like the vivacious girl she used to be.

She's ashamed of what she's done to herself and her life. That's probably the reason she doesn't want anyone from Hogwarts to see her or speak to her right now – because they won't be happy to see the change in her. They won't understand just how rough winter has been. To them, it will look easy, and it isn't.

Spring rains have washed the misery of winter away, true enough, but they've left a very tender being in their wake – as if her skin is made of thin glass, easy to break with the slightest touch, her fragile insides protected by nothing because her bones are shattered the moment her skin is gone.

The sun comes out more, when it's not raining. Grass _is _trying to grow. Leaves are working their silent magic, preparing to use the circumstances to their advantage. Nature can get used to things too, as she knows.

Life is trying to make a move on. Things are growing. People do their everyday activities, even if they might be dead the next minute with the war raging through the country at the moment. Children who have to grow up in this shroud of distrust are as innocent as ever, smiling and laughing and playing like children of the past did and the children of the future will.

Times are dark, but there's light in all the littlest miracles – spring coming around, rain wiping away the horrible reminders of a winter that never felt more sinister, the earliest flowers making an appearance outside her apartment building.

She might be tender right now, brittle as fine china, but that's only now, because she's been through a lot. In a time of learning from the old and embracing the new; of life stirring and coming out of its standstill; of rebirth in anything that can grow, anything can happen.

Spring's magic has always been subtle, and that's why – because it comes about from things and people looking in and around themselves to make the transformations they need. The atmosphere, despite all that rain, is new and enchanting and magical in its own sense; like giving birth, because it's painful and gory and messy, but something beautiful for all its chaotic disarray comes out of it anyhow.

She gets up off the bed she is sitting on right now, after work when she usually goes to sleep because she has no energy left in her to do much else. Ignoring the protest in her wriggling stomach, she takes giant, clumsy strides to her bathroom. She ignores the usual mess there, and instantly picks out her eyeliner, which is sitting where it sat months ago when she stopped using it.

She holds the tiny bottle in her hands, and gives it a good shake. Taking out the small brush attached to the cap, she takes in the familiar sight of the black eye-paint, and the excitement she got as a young teenager from putting it on. She's feeling oddly valiant tonight for the first time in a long time.

Nostalgia choking her thick throat, she takes her trembling hand, and she stretches her eyelid horizontally with her finger like she learned how to do. And she paints a shaky line across the bottom of the frail skin, one eyelid after the other.

She closes the bottle and looks in the mirror. She looks as devastating as ever, but now there's eyeliner on her eyes.

It's not perfect, and it looks particularly dramatic with how thin she has become, but it's something.

She wipes it away with the back of her hand almost immediately, smearing her face with black that she washes with water from the tap, but she's still proud that she opened that old eyeliner and used it. It's more than she's done for such a long time.

She looks out the window, and sees that the rain has started up again, lighting up the evening sky with its unadulterated majesty. Chewing on the inside of her mouth, she puts the eyeliner away and goes back to her room, but this time, she isn't shaking, and she doesn't go to sleep.

She just lies there on her bed, staring out of her window, looking past the skeletal buildings around London, past the streets with people fleeing the wetness, past the navy where the bright horizon line should be.

And instead of hiding in the warmth of her covers, she watches the rain and cajoles herself to think about things she normally doesn't want to think about.

She does this for the longest time, so much longer than she thought she would, until the rain stops and the sky is clear and the faintest traces of light blue begin creeping into the stars' dominating reign; the night is always darkest before the dawn, and after all this time, her own sun is up too.

--

A/N: Review…but be gentle if you don't like it. If it's not obvious enough, I'm feeling very tender at the moment.


	4. Summer

A/N: The final season…exciting, isn't it? It is for me; I've written some serious misery for this story, and now I'm getting some optimism in there. Growing up is hard and confusing and it's easy to fall apart, but if you cling to the people you love, you'll probably be okay – that's the point I'm attempting to make.

Motivated by your reviews, "Make a Memory" by Bon Jovi, "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson, and "Let Love In" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Enjoy, and of course review. It's okay to not be gentle this time, though, because I'm done being tender. I'm _fearless_. Hit me with all you've got.

--

For some reason, summer always reminds Lily of babies.

Well, maybe not babies specifically, but children. Young children. Children who are bright, energetic, curious, and interested. Children who are intuitive, who know so much more than people think they do, whose worlds are roughly the size of their backyards; children who love making messes and rolling down grassy hills; children who play and play and play and occasionally fight, but start playing again anyway.

Children who are wholesome, blameless, pure at heart and soul; children who laugh and cry and experience and need things.

Summer is bright; the world alight in the most sun England receives all year. Summer brings about gentle breezes lightly lifting up skirts and playing with ponytails; it brings bad barbeques in the thick air with all the neighbors, long days and nights free for giggles and gossip, sunshine despite the war taking over the country.

Summer tastes like ice cream, looks like the fireflies that she can never catch in jars, smells like honeysuckle, sounds like crickets chirping song in the backyard, feels like mosquitoes ripping and biting at various ankles a night.

Summer is a time out of time, a time that doesn't feel it's connected to this world full of bleak and rational things. No matter what's going on in the world, no matter how fed-up she is, she knows summer isn't about wallowing; it's about smiling even when things aren't okay, about enjoying these days that feel so few, these days that won't come back for so many months.

Summer is about children – children at the park until the sun begins to set, children buying ice-lollies and letting the melting juice run down their tanned arms, children being children and having picnics outside together. Somehow, everything is brighter with a child around; when she was a kid, summer felt like paradise.

Now, she's not a kid, and summer feels emptied of all those novelties she wrongly assumed would mean something this year; like a broken promise, a locket smashed to the ground.

It's July now, the peak of the brightness summer has to offer, but she wears jeans and old t-shirts. To her credit, she's gained five pounds and looks better for it, and she's wearing make-up again; and she even demanded a day off of work the other day, spending it taking a walk in the park where a pair of little girls reminding her achingly of her and her sister were talking on the swing-set.

Pump, pump, swing. Pump, pump, swing. Their small legs, working hard to keep them going, keep them soaring, keep them feeling like they were going so much higher than they really were. When they got tired and she was still there, they asked her so sweetly to push them, and she did, pushing them until they screamed with mixed horror and delight, pushing them until her own arms ached and she left the park.

Leaving was difficult for her, she recalls, because seeing those girls with their freedom and their closeness and dedication to each other reminds her of her own summer. Back when things were simple, and the most important thing she had to do was pick the right amount of friends to play with.

It's easier now, remembering things like that, when her existence was small and insulated. She can do it. Summer still entrances her, and she likes the possibility of it – the feeling of a blank slate, the feeling that the planet has somehow sat down in a back-row seat with popcorn to watch her make something of herself.

Winter stifles her, and summer sets her free again. She's spent a long time in captivity, but at least she's learning. Living on her own isn't as hard anymore. Work occupies her, and finally a few months ago, Marlene and Alice nearly rammed her door down trying to get in and see her. They had a girl's day out (Marlene has a tendency of being persuasive) and things felt right in the world, her two best friends at her side.

A week later, Alice had arrived again with news – James Potter was asking where she was. He'd been trying to get in touch with her for ages but couldn't. "Bad circumstances," was what he had apparently said. Alice wanted her to write to him.

By herself, she never would have. It would've been easy to put it off. But now that Alice was there, an unstoppable force of nature when she felt the need to be, there were no decent, explainable reasons for her behavior, and she had to do it. So she had.

That was back in May, though. James had answered her letter and told her he would come to see her – Alice knew where she was. She vaguely wondered when reading that how Alice was in contact with James, but she didn't ask. She only read the simple letter, a sharply wonderful but pungently bitter feeling sending chills down her spine and warmth into her stomach as she took in the terrible handwriting she had chastised him for, the way he wrote her name better than the rest of the words, the painfully familiar scent of him still lingering on the page.

If she thought she had missed him before, it was nothing to how she felt when she read that letter. She hugged it to her chest for a long time before she could part with it again. She couldn't wait to see him.

Now, in July, he sent her a letter a week ago apologizing for his lateness and saying he would meet her in front of her building today. She told him she couldn't wait, and she couldn't. But when today finally comes and he will be here, living and breathing and taking up space like she, she is oddly calm.

She wears shorts, for once, and a green shirt she knows looks good on her. She even puts on lipstick before she goes outside to wait. When she comes outside, he is already here – an hour early.

It takes her a moment to catch her breath, for this man has always had a horrible habit of taking it away from her. He's as lovely as he was in seventh year, but like her, he has grown up.

His face is thin, and he clearly took some pains to shave cleanly – his cheeks are quite pink. His eyes are bright and alert, as hazel as they came to her in memories, and he can't keep still. He never could, but somehow, she's glad he can't; she's changed too much, and so has everything and everyone else she knows and believes in.

Out of all the things that have been altered, he is the one she wants to stay at least somewhat the same.

So she clears her throat as he drinks her in, eager as she to do so, and she says the most eloquent greeting she can think of on the spot – "Hi."

He chuckles, that chuckle that drowns her in small instances she's heard it before in, and she finds herself beaming like she hasn't for a while. "Hi," he replies.

"Erm, you're early," she feels the need to point out.

"I gave myself time to miss a few of the Tube trains on my way here," he explains. "I didn't miss any, though, because I didn't oversleep this morning – so actually, I'm on time."

She laughs, the sound making her giddy. "Still as disorganized as ever, huh?"

"You know it." His smile is so broad; she wonders how his face can hold it in. She is struck by the sudden urge to come forward and touch him – touch his face, his nose, anything, really. But she doesn't. Not yet. It's not really the right time. She'll know when it is.

"So…" She drags her toe shyly on the grassy ground. "How've you kept? It's been a while."

"It has," he says, his tone suddenly solemn and almost anxious. "And I'm sorry it's been a while. Every time I tried to owl you, my silly owl didn't know where to find you. You didn't tell many people where you lived in a large city like London."

She shrugs, blushing. "I know. I was supposed to be discreet."

"You did your job a bit too well." He smiles, but lets his hand brush ever so slightly by hers, sending alarm bells going off through her body, despite the strange harmony in the gesture nonetheless.

She doesn't know what to make of him, so she stares into his face, stares into all those features she's missed more deeply than she could ever tell him in words, and purses her lips, trying to figure out how he feels and what he wants to say and why he's here and if he still cares about her.

There was a time when she knew exactly how to find all these things and more in his face, back in seventh year. Now she has to relearn those skills, relearn the man she loves – which is so peculiarly heartbreaking. She shouldn't have let him go in the first place.

But he's here _now_. Right here, in front of her, close enough to touch, close enough to kiss; no hallucinations, no nothing. She's just spent too much time on her own to be able to accept this, and she has a feeling he's figuring this out about her.

She's sure of it when he takes her hand ever so shyly in his own, and says seriously, "I've missed you."

Her throat mysteriously full, she attempts to clear it and doesn't look him in the eye when she says, "I've missed you too." Thinking these words is much different from saying them aloud with her own tongue, to a person who can seem so ordinary and so monumental to her at the same time. She takes one quick peek at his pools of hazel to see if he gets it.

He does. She knows this look from times she studied too many long nights in a row – it's the concerned look, the look he gives her when he wonders if she's not saying something, when he really wishes he could open up her brain and see what's going on in there.

She stares him down, helping and hindering him but surprising them both, and he almost touches her jaw, but then pulls back. "I…erm…do you want to walk?"

This is getting to be increasingly awkward, despite these emotions flashing across their faces like brief lightning, and she can tell he's dying to ask her some very blunt questions he doesn't feel he can say out loud, but it's too good to be here with him. She can walk. She can handle his questions. She has a few of her own, after all – as he said, it's been awhile.

She nods, though, and they walk around the courtyard together – not holding hands and not quite touching, but close enough to establish a sort of intimacy. His warm solidity is blissful to her, because her world has been undulating beneath her feet since she left school; he looks and smells and acts just like she did when she left him, and she appreciates this more than his coming here to see her. She could happily lie down beside him and listen to him breathe, it's so wonderful to be with him.

She doesn't say so, though; she only glances at him, briefly, and walks with him, wondering if he is waiting for her to speak. She decides to wait, and she is rewarded about a heartbeat later when he says, his voice strained, "Lily, I have missed you so much more than I could ever tell you. It's been hard, you know, not seeing you."

The obvious pain in his words and manner is hard to take, because she knows that if she spoke to anyone, she would sound the same. She knows all too well how he feels, and she says so. "It's been horrible for me too. I tried owling you so many times…but whenever I was ready to strap the letter to the owl, I just couldn't. I didn't know what to say."

"Anything would've done it for me," he says, looking down at her the moment she looks up at him, their eyes locking and promptly molting under the other's sincerity. "After seventh year…I never got to say the things I wanted to say. We left so quickly and suddenly, and I couldn't help but think we could've had so much more together…"

"We could've," she admits. She's been thinking about this a lot, as the weather got nicer and she spent more time outside instead of inside, her thoughts going on long walks and not coming back until late. She voices some of these things she's thought, her tone measured and careful: "We were just too young and epic for our own goods. I couldn't handle who and what you were, and you didn't understand who and what I was. Seventh year didn't leave us much time to catch up on what we missed."

"That's the worst part though, isn't it?" he says, musingly, urgently. "Not having enough time. There's a war going on, Lily, and I'm part of it. So are you. I just…I don't want it to be like this. I want to have eons with you, not a few stolen moments between work, not an owl or two when I miss you."

"It's _not_ fair," she agrees, her old winter ache undermining her tone, but not quite taking it over. "But James, we can make it work if we want it to."

"Of course we can," he says, stopping them mid-step and holding her soft hand in his hardened one, looking her so deep into the eye it cuts into her like a knife, so deep that he lacerates her insides with his solitary stare. "But do you want us to?"

She feels the chill of his words, the things she's chosen to turn her head away from for as long as she's rejected him bringing an unpleasant reminder to this conversation. But she's not that girl anymore, she tells herself fiercely; she's different now. Like him, she has a better idea of who and what she is, where's she's come from and where she wants to go, and she's not going to make the same mistakes again.

She's not going to hide behind her misery. She's not going to shut him out, regardless of the war that's trying, and almost succeeded in stifling her. Life is for living, and that's what she has to do.

James is not just another man who's going to smash her to bits. He's _James_, for Merlin's sake…with all he is, with all he's ready to be for her, with the way he's looking at her now, how can she doubt that he is worth a shot? How can she doubt that she wants him, that she wants to sink into him, exhausted with hurt and levity and every shade of affection between the two?

So she looks him right back in the eye now, her old strength cascading through the various layers within her like a waterfall, and she says as intensely as she ever has, "I do want us to."

Something in him lightens with the fervor in her tone, but she's not done yet. He doesn't know_ why _she wants to, and he should. She is tired of secrets and she is tired of being alone with what's wrong with her; after this strange, lonely year living as a woman on her own, she's at bursting point. She's got a person she has to be, and in the face of war, she can't do it as just Lily – it's okay to depend on other people, as she knows now, and she will. _James_.

That's why she comes closer to him, her hands touching and resting and reacquainting with his, and she says, "James, in seventh year, we started in the middle of a relationship. I don't want to do that this time. I want to start at the beginning and work my way through the end."

She rests her forehead against his, the two of them closing their eyes at the closeness, their noses grazing against each other like they can never have enough, as he whispers to her, "We don't have time."

"We'll _make _time," she whispers back, easing slightly away with agonizing difficulty, her hands moving to his face and tracing his cheeks, his nose, his mouth. "We're here _now_, aren't we?"

"We are," he says, his voice stronger as he gathers her face up in his own hands, strong and willful, almost afraid of how much he loves her. "We are here."

"And for as long as I'm here, I will be with you," she says, "because there's no point going into this without you."

"I love you," he says, so earnestly it seems to be coming straight from the depths of his very soul, the emotion so poignant in his eyes and everything else about him. "I always have."

"And I love you too," she says warmly but bravely, the words on her tongue truer than any she has spoken before. "I love you, and I don't want to spend any more time away from you."

"I'll move in tomorrow, if you'd like," he offers, smoothing out her tangled curls with his patient hand.

"I would like that," she says honestly. "I'd like that very much."

"Cool." He laughs softly, but his eyes never change as they greedily drink her in, as she drinks him back just as greedily, her every part of her fluttering like open doors for him.

In autumn, she remembered. In winter, she hid. In spring, she woke. And now, in the midst of summer, she is coming to her own; rediscovering with careful fingers that innocence she thought she had lost, rediscovering everything that is beautiful, rediscovering that while love can hurt like nothing else can, love can fix like nothing else can as well.

She knows with a conviction deep in her bones she'll never be able to explain that things are going to be okay now. Gone is the uncertainty and darkness that came with growing up, back in December. Gone is the notion that she isn't enough.

Right now, in the blazing summer sunlight, with his lips on hers after far too long, she feels lighter than she's been in recent memory. It feels good, to be light like this. She's white with her purity – as clean and whole-hearted and heartfelt as a laughing, exploring child of summer.

She feels refreshed; but more than that, she feels as beautiful as that unknowing girl he made love to on that last night before leaving all that was important in her young life behind.

Because now, when she finds in herself a resilience she never knew she had, when she has that wretched boy that made her feel so special as a little girl, she once again shines like a woman finally comfortable with being loved – and giving love in return.

Even in wartime, it all comes back down to those profound bonds wand sparks can't break; the bonds of people who love each other. So long as there's _something _there, she knows that humanity will recover from this war. She knows that people are all too willing to hold close the notion of loving someone when the radiance of the world crashes to the ground. She is one of them.

And now, as she stands here with him in her crappy apartment garden, watching the sun sink lower and lower in the erratic golden explosion in a sky that suddenly feels like a second skin instead of a pressured weight on her head, watching the dying light cast shadows on a world trying so hard to fight its inner demons, she is happy in the simplest way possible.

She knows what being happy really means. She knows why she's here, in one piece, at the end of all she has come to terms with this year. She knows what is important to her, and what she wants to live for, but also what she wants to die for, one day if the time calls for it.

She is ready for everything. She has found what she needs.

She breaks her kiss with great effort, smiling slightly at the beautiful face of a man who loves her, she rests her cheek on his shoulder, and feels him squeeze her closer, as though it would kill him to have to let her go. He looks down at her just as tears of pure, unexplainable joy brim around her eyes; and with the tenderness he has shown her even when she was seventeen and naïve, he kisses them away like he did so long ago, bringing back a host of memories that don't hurt as much as they did before. She remembers how this goes, and for once, she lets the amorous images of months past roll.

And then he kisses her lips, kisses them softly and carefully but so, so blissfully, and he holds her pale valentine of a face in his strong hands, kissing her and making his vast feelings and desires simple for her.

Autumn, winter, and spring, with all the painfulness they represent in her wrung-out mind, are gone now; and she is determined to keep her neglected summer alive, even when the sun goes down.

--

A/N: Review, por favor?


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